Midnight Spear
by Mikells
Summary: With the world shattered by war, two vampire clans vie for the power to either restore the world to the way it was before or remake it to fit their own design...
1. Preface

**PREFACE**

I'll never forget the day it all changed. The day vampires became the dominant species once more.

It's all _their_ fault. If they hadn't broken the laws they were supposed to uphold and protect, things might still be fine these days. It's the duty of our people to protect our secret. It's our duty to kill those that break the law.

They didn't. They couldn't. They broke it. They weren't exactly going to kill themselves. No. Self preservation runs high.

I was there when it happened. Standing far behind the lines, watching the staring contest between the two heads as if expecting that it would physically ignite the spark that had been lit that day. It didn't, but at the same time it had.

But our dominance had not come without price. It had come with such a high cost, in fact, that I often wondered if it was worth everything that had happened.

Here's my story …


	2. Chapter 1

**1. THAT WHICH SURVIVES**

So; that night started off fairly ordinary for me. But then again, what's ordinary in a world that's been gnawed away piece by piece, first by the vampires, and then by the humans?

I'd gotten up from my forty-five-thousandth sleepless night since becoming an immortal. Most of the night was spent staring at the ceiling. The rest with my eyes closed just idly reflecting on my hundred and fifty-odd years of life. I dunked myself into last night's wash water, dried off, dressed. Then I'd started to walk north.

Fire still dominated much of the bushland of northern Queensland, even though it'd been years since the bombs fell. Dysart was a refugee centre now. It used to be a mining town. Small; perhaps a thousand people, give or take. Small enough that multiple grade levels were mashed together into a single class in the school.

But since the bombs … since the world went nuts … it had become a safe harbour for people fleeing to the north to be closer to the equator where it's warmer. The old mines had been dug out, the tunnels and chambers smoothed through hard work, and now served as living space for the humans still living in the town. Unwelcome visitors were locked out, made to brave the barren surface of the town in which not much left still stood.

The perfect hunting grounds. There weren't many of those left. Vampire were everywhere these days, and they always travelled in packs of five or more. They think there's safety in numbers. They're wrong. Just because they know what we are, that doesn't mean they know just what we can do.

But they carry fire. That's worrisome. Or, it would be, if they were fast enough to use it. Maybe that's just arrogance talking. You live long enough in a world where everyone's trying to kill you and arrogance will eventually creep in. It's inevitable.

I didn't have a clue what drove me back there. I haven't lived in Dysart since the bombs. That was twenty years ago.

Hmm.

That makes it twenty-four years since the wars started.

Wars plural. Depending on how you look at it. Myself, and those like me, view it in such a way: two wars on multiple fronts against multiple foes. Those we fight against, those like us that we fight against, view it as a single war and an extermination. They see the humans as nothing more than an annoyance that needs to be put in its place.

But the catch of that was that eliminating humans as a whole eliminates their food source. We don't feed off humans … at least, not all of us on my side of the war. Some of us still did, mostly because we've done it for so many decades or centuries that we're worried that drinking anything weaker might weaken us. I haven't noticed the difference.

I'd gone back to drinking humans in the past few years. Livestock left out in the open was either dying or dead. The rest has been safely sealed away by the humans for their own survival.

It's unfortunate that I had to take lives to survive, but the alternatives were rapidly dwindling. Even as minimised as the human numbers were after they nuked themselves into a wintery dark age, they did tend to replenish their numbers fast. It's how they'd became the dominant species on the planet in the first place.

Until we screwed things up for them.

Movement ahead caught my eye.

I stopped. Froze, really, and wait. With the sentient occupants of the world divided into three factions, in this part of the country I knew that there could only be two possibilities: humans, or _them_.

If it was _them_, they'd probably already picked up my scent, if not the sound of my boots against the gravel and ruined, toppled house walls. If it was _them_, there were probably twenty of them nearby to lend aid. Their hunting parties weren't usually smaller than twenty, and usually always with a few gifted.

If it was humans, my options skyrocketed. I could move some, if they hadn't heard me crunching about. They couldn't smell me. They couldn't catch me. If it was a slayer party, I could just run. I didn't engage slayer parties. Edicts from our leaders.

I was half right with my second assumption. It was a small group of humans. They were bundled in cold-weather clothes, their faces masked against the harsh wind. Their broad shoulders and the grunts of exertion as they pick their way through the rubble told me that two of them were men. The third was a woman, shorter and slighter with a few locks of long dark hair streaming out from her head gear. I didn't think she's intended that. The way she swatted at it tells me as much.

I sighed and move more carefully, approaching them from upwind so I could take in their scents. None of them smelled especially repulsive. In fact, they all smelled healthy. They hadn't been touched much by the contaminants in the air. They smelled earthy, and dirty; sweat gathering in their pits and the smalls of their backs.

But it was the woman I payed most attention to. She smelled the most appetising out of the three of them. I could hardly resist the urge to dart out there and snatch her up.

Instead, I chose the path of patience, and waited, and listened. "There's no one here, Frank," one of the men said. "What the hell kind of intelligence tells you otherwise. It's a dump!"

"Respect for the dead, you shit," the other man snapped back. "And I told you; it wasn't any kind of intelligence. It was just a feeling."

"A feeling, eh, Frank?" the first man said slyly. "You sure that wasn't that feeling you get in the pants whenever you look at Gen?"

"What?" the woman said, her head coming up and looking back and forth between the two men. "What's that?"

"Shut the fuck up, Dan," the second man growled, holding up a clenched fist, "or you'll get a bit of this between the teeth. I'm sure you'll feel something then, too."

The first man chuckled and waved a hand absently. His friend lowered his fist and turned to examine some rubble nearby. The woman continued to switch her gaze from one to the other.

I stalked the trio for a little while as they sifted through the felled buildings and craters and overturned trucks and cars. I always kept them within sight. Only one of the men—the one that had been threatened for his humour—was armed. It was one of those special crossbows with a steel bolt covered in fluid. Fuel. There was a lighter sitting at the front; the flint tied into the trigger mechanism to light the bolt before it flew.

A dangerous weapon.

While the bolt would do nothing save bounce off the diamond-hard skin of a vampire, the fire would be another issue if one of my kind was so careless as to not see it coming. That was rare.

Aside from that crossbow, none of them had even the semblance of a weapon. Not even a pitiful little stick to delude themselves that they were safe. I would have to keep that crossbow in mind, though. Carelessness could lead to being set alight, and that was not an experience I cared to repeat.

"What's this?" the woman said suddenly, drawing my attention to the left. When I looked, I saw her squat down and dust something off before picking it up to show the two men, who had come to her side.

One of them whistled. "Nice find, Gen," he said. I couldn't see it from my vantage point, so I shifted a dozen meters over to the right and looked again.

A box. Nothing special in itself. It was small, squarish, pine. The brass hinges were caked with dirt and the lock was rusted. A quick smash with the butt of the crossbow, and the humans had it open. Inside were a few stacks of hundred dollar bills, a couple of notes, some keys and a handgun. The keys, I assumed, was what they were after. After all, with the end of the world had come the end of money and secret notes detailing business transactions or blackmail. Handguns were useless on us, and humans had stopped killing each other when they had realised the common threat.

Nonetheless, it was the handgun as well as the keys that they took out, dumping the box afterwards with the money and note still inside.

They emptied the gun of its bullets and then tossed it aside too.

That had me curious. What could they possible want the bullets for? Humans knew by now that little bits of metal propelled through the air at speeds beyond which they could see were not going to do any harm. Most vampires wouldn't even feel the bullet bounce off, such an insignificant thing it was.

So what was it?

"Anything else? Or will that do us?" the woman, Gen, asked her companions.

"I dunno," one of the men said, looking to the other. "Do you like our chances of finding any more of those around here?"

"It'd be a long shot, at best," the other man replied. He scratched his chin in thought and then looked over his shoulder. "You know, we could always just camp out somewhere before heading back and tell them that was all we found. What they don't know won't kill them."

"It might if a vampire catches them because they don't have a means to protect themselves," the woman said meekly.

Both men frowned at the comment. One of them turned his head and spat. "Bloody leeches," he said. "Alright, we'll look some more. Fan out. Meet back here in about an hour. I don't want to stay topside much longer than I have to. Could be leeches around somewhere."

"An hour," the other man said. The woman just nodded her head, and the three of them parted ways.

I followed the woman. Mostly, because of her scent. But also because I didn't see in her the same distaste as I had in the others at the mention of vampires. That had me interested. Actually, I was very interested. I'd never encountered a human before that hadn't been either hateful or afraid. I guess it comes with the territory.

She made her way around what had once been the school grounds and weaved between the trashed cars on streets leading to what had been a residential area. Occasionally, she stopped to pick something up, only to toss it again when it proved to be nothing of value.

It wasn't until she reached a house on Winterer Crescent that I suspected maybe she had stopped actually looking for whatever it was they were looking for. The house had been a single story classic. Its roof had caved from a felled tree which had since been moved off. Not a single window remained intact. The yard was a charred mess and the driveway nonexistent. The fence had been uprooted and taken away, as had probably everything of value inside.

The woman looked at the house with a strange expression. Familiarity? Nostalgia?

It took me a few seconds, but it finally clicked. This had once been her home. She'd have been a little girl when the bombs had fallen. A small girl frightened and afraid of the war going on outside, bundled up by her parents and taken away to a safe place before the house had become a target. How much time had it taken for the damage to happen? Days? Weeks

Not more than months, at most. The sheer amount of nuclear and ballistic missiles dropped in those few months had rendered the humans unable to launch more. Electromagnetic pulses wiped out all their technological means. It was, in all respects, a kind of Dark Age.

She moved towards the house, picking her way through piles of rubbish and rubble. The front door was hanging off its hinges, and opened at a simple push.

I jumped down from the roof across the road where I had been perched, watching. Dashing towards the house, I followed her in. I stuck to the shadows so she wouldn't see me. I watched the floors so I wouldn't step on anything that would make noise and give myself away. My steps were light, careful, silent. Nothing was disturbed, not even by the pressure of my passing.

It wasn't until I had gotten ahead of her and put myself in a corner of the living area that I smelled it.

Another scent.

Not human.

Vampire.

I whirled, watching the room, taking everything in with my enhanced sight. My squad wasn't in the area. None of my people were in the area. This could only be—

"Well, well, well," a cold voice came from the shadows on the other side of the living room. For a moment, I thought I had been spotted. I curled my fingers into claws and bared my teeth. I was just about to step out of the shadows to challenge the other intruder when I saw the human woman step into the room and freeze at the voice.

"Who's there?" she asked, her voice quivering.

Damn it.

A sinister chuckle rent the air, and something dropped from the ceiling in the farthest corner, rolled forward into a standing position.

He was taller than me, and broader in the shoulders. His hair was shaved and his dark, red eyes gleamed. But she couldn't see that. All she saw was the menacing look on his face, his lips formed into a smirk as he stood three meters away from her. His arms were crossed over his chest. He had on dark jeans and a navy blue shirt with a jacket over the top and military style boots on his feet.

"A silly little human girl," the vampire said, cocking his head to one side. "And one of the Cullens' dogs."

"Wh–what?" the woman stammered.

Before she could register that there was anyone else in the room, the other vampire charged at her.

I charged at him.

It was a beautiful dance.


	3. Chapter 2

**2. SAVIOUR? I THINK NOT**

I hit him before he reached her, lashing out with my left hand and catching him across the jaw with a satisfying smack that left a ringing sound in the air. The other vampire went flying through the wall and smashed through the wall with a crashing sound.

The human woman, behind me now, was shaking. I spared a glance over my shoulder to look her over. She seemed OK, if you disregarded the fear that had gripped her.

I widened my stance and watched as the other vampire got back to his feet and came at me.

He moved far too quickly for the woman to keep a track of. But I could see him—just. He was a fast one that was for sure.

His fist connected with my gut before I could duck out of the way. I doubled over, trying to suck in the air that had been denied me. Temporarily helpless, I watched the knee come up towards my face like lightning. It connected with a loud crack and I was launched at the ceiling. My head pierced the roof first and I wedged there between the wood and tile until I felt the other intruder pull at my ankle, yanking me back into the living space of the house.

"Welcome back," he snarled. I caught him in the side of the head with both hands clasped together like a wrecking ball. Teeth shattered and he staggered to the side, spitting them out.

"What the fuck is your lot doing here?" I demanded at once. Free again, I put myself between him and the woman. If anyone was going to feed from her tonight, it was definitely going to be me. I wasn't going to let one of _them_ deny me.

"I was under the impression this was contested ground?" The other vampire put on an act of shock, as if he had been wrong. He knew he hadn't. "And last I checked, contested ground was supposed to be fought for."

He came at me again with that last word. I dodged left, dragging the woman around with me. So he wouldn't get her in my absence. She yelped, and I felt the bones in her wrist give.

Oh well. Humans were such frail things.

The other vampire roared his displeasure and swung around to come at me again.

Releasing the woman's wrist, I charged right back. Fists connected with each other. Quick as a flash, he opened his left hand and wrapped his fingers tight around my right, squeezing. Knuckles popped, bone was pushed to its stress limits. I wrapped the fingers of my left around his right and returned the favour. The fingers in my right hand were starting to splinter, and I hadn't even caused him any equal measure of discomfort yet.

Maybe I should rethink that "not letting him deny me" theory, I thought to myself. I lurched forward, cracking my skull against his and catching him off guard. The smile that had been on his face disappeared and he let out a frustrated snarl as he backpedalled away from me.

My hand free, I shook it and flexed my fingers as best I could. I could feel the bones starting to heal already. The hand would be fine in a minute.

A small crack had appeared in the forehead of the other vampire, though, exactly where I had hit him. Like a crack in stone. It, too, was starting to heal.

I frowned.

"You must be the Winters child," he said mockingly. I glared.

"Child?" I snarled.

"Child," he repeated. "Compared to me, you're nothing more than a snivelling child. You can't beat me."

He was right about that, at least—partially. Through brute strength alone, I couldn't. He'd already proven that he was stronger than I was. In that brief grapple, I'd been able to judge his strength. He'd nearly managed to mangle my hand entirely, and I had done nothing to even make him wince. The head butt had only worked because it had surprised him.

But there were other ways to fight. So far, I had assumed that he was ungifted. In fights against _them_, I usually based assumptions like that on whether they opened with their gift. But the fact that this one had immense physical strength flew in the face of that, because it was entirely possible that he had gotten it into his head that he didn't need his gift to pulp me.

He was probably right. But he would have to catch me. I wasn't entirely useless. I couldn't match his physical strength, but I had a gift very few could match.

"Arrogance typical of your kind," I said with a smirk. "You'd think you'd have learned after the losses you suffered in South America."

His confident nature wilted a little, his eyes narrowed and teeth bared in an angry snarl that told me exactly what he thought of that. "Shut your goddamn mouth!"

He charged again. Roaring the whole way he came at an angle I thought odd for such an attack. His arm wound back, hand open. I stepped to the side to get out of the way of his charge.

A scream rent the air. A feminine scream.

Shit!

I whirled and tracked his progress. He hadn't been aiming for me at all. He had been going for the girl.

Summoning strength from within myself, I flung my hand out at him and watched as he halted mid-stride. The snarl was still on his face when he slammed sideways into the wall and slumped to the floor.

The screaming stopped. I looked over at the woman and saw her staring at me through wide, brown eyes. She backed up against the wall, still shaking, trying to keep as much distance between me and herself as between her and the other.

"What the hell," the other vampire panted, "was that?"

I turned to face him again, frowning. He had pushed himself to one knee and was looking up at me as he took deep breaths.

"Just a taste of what you're dealing with. I'm surprised that you knew who I was and didn't think to take into account my talents." I didn't say it without a degree of glee. _They_ were always underestimating me. I'm pretty sure their leaders know what I can do. But for the most part, they seem to be keeping that information from their inferiors. "Not the smartest move you've made."

"SHUT UP!"

I grinned. "So, would you like another?" I gestured again, reaching within for the strength I needed. He shot up along the wall until his head breached the ceiling before I released him again and let him crash to the floor.

"I," he breathed, pushing himself back to his feet, "am going to _kill_ you!"

He charged me again. This time, I held my ground. I waited for him to get within range. He wasn't weakened much from my psychic attacks, but he had slowed just a little. Just enough that I could.

I grabbed him by his outstretched wrists, swinging him around once before releasing him and sending him flying through the window.

"Stay here," I said over my shoulder to the quivering girl. I didn't even get a response, and didn't bother to spare the glance over my shoulder to check if she was even still conscious.

I jumped out through the window and landed with a menacing thud a meter away from my foe.

He pushed himself to his feet again. "Fight on equal footing, you bastard," he demanded when he saw my hand come out again.

"Equal footing is such a novel concept," I replied tonelessly. "If you have an advantage, use it, I say. I'm pretty sure your leaders employ that philosophy every chance they get."

Using my gift, I flung him back another few meters. He crashed through rubble, growling at me with every object he bounced off or smashed through.

"Where are your friends?" I asked him when he got back to his feet.

"What?" He took a few steps to close the distance and then stopped, arms crossed once more and his stance neutral. "What friends?"

"You're the vanguard of one of your hunting parties, aren't you?" I question. "So where are the others? Off terrorising humans?"

"I think you're mistaken," he said with a smile. That smile was really getting irritating. "I'm not part of any hunting party. It's just me …"

Something flew through the air. It was too fast for me to dodge, so I struck out with my fist. It connected, my hand broke, and the object kept coming. It was so fast that it was barely more than a blur even to my sight.

Pain knocked me down to a knee.

"And her," the other vampire said.

From the corner of my eye, I could just make out the feminine jaw outline and long, blonde locks of another vampire. I couldn't make out much more than that, for she had her teeth buried to the gums in my shoulder, pumping venom into me.

Damn it! I snarled. Claws dug at my arms, nails digging into hard flesh. I gasped with the pain, clenching my eyes shut as if that would help. Venom seeped into the wound through the woman's saliva. I couldn't move. I could barely think. The pain and the paralysis continued to spread.

"And now," the other vampire started, approaching me slowly, confidently, "I think it's time we removed a thorn in my masters' sides. You have been particularly troublesome to their efforts to expand in this country. With you out of the way, your sister will be of no problem to us and we can wipe out the rest of your pathetic movement.

"The Cullens will lose, you know?" I opened my eyes and glared up at him with all the hatred I could muster. I reached for my inner gift. If I could reach it, I could get myself free. "Yes; the Cullens _will_ lose. It's inevitable. My masters are far more powerful than that rag tag family of freaks. Their numbers are dwindling, and they're getting desperate."

I growled. He was right in at least one thing. The Cullens' numbers _were_ dwindling. One had been killed by the witch twins in the opening weeks of the war, unable to foresee her own demise due to some trickery employed by _them_. Her lover had let himself be torn asunder in grief over the loss, but he had at least taken down an invasion force of them in the process. That had stalled the enemy for a while.

The former head of the Cullen family had been assassinated and his head, it was rumoured, still adorned the throne room in Volterra. A reminder that even former friends were not beyond the farce they called justice. His adopted son was head of the family now, and his ability to read minds and his wife's ability to shield others from the gifted had resulted in numerous victories against the enemy gifted.

But that didn't point to a loss. In fact, the Cullens' efforts had pushed the Volturi away from many areas of expansion. They no longer had forces in the North American continent worth worrying about—only a few stragglers that drifted around taking advantage of any of the Cullens' followers that were foolish enough to be caught alone. South America wasn't entirely under control, though the Amazon clan had secured an impenetrable boundary along the Brazil-Columbia borders, keeping invaders from pushing northward.

"You're wrong," I snarl. "Your kind are going to die!"

Nails dug in deeper, breaking what concentration I had. I could still touch my gift. But with the woman digging her nails and teeth into me, shredding and burning flesh, I couldn't concentrate.

"That's what—"

_THUNK!_

I felt the vibrations through the woman holding me. Something had hit her hard enough for me to feel it, but hardly enough to dislodge her. She did that herself. Her teeth came out, her nails slipped free. I hissed with the renewed pain. My own venom, in place of blood, coated the wounds and began the healing process. But to say it was painless would be untrue.

When I turned, I saw the female vampire charging towards a bundled human with dark eyes and dark strands of hair flying loose in the air.

Damn! Damn, damn, DAMN!

I followed suit, grabbing the offending vampire by the ankle and flinging her over my shoulder to her partner. They collided with a loud crack and I grabbed the woman and took off as fast as I could.

I ran for a couple of hours without pause before I found a place to stop. They had lost my trail somewhere around Brisbane and I had since doubled back to Rockhampton and hidden the two of us at a resort I knew on Yeppoon Road.

After making sure again that we hadn't been followed, I slumped down against a wall opposite where the human was sitting and looked down at the floor. My wounds had long healed by now, but my pride not so much, and my shoulder still burned from the venom.

"Vampire." It came out as a whisper, but I knew that she was addressing me. I looked up at her. She'd taken the wrappings away from her head, and I could see her face properly. It was heart shaped, with dark hair that spilled down over her shoulders and chest. Her dark eyes seemed warm, despite the fear she must be feeling. Her lips were not quite full, her nose small but not too small.

"Human," I said.

She frowned. "What was that about? Back there?"

I didn't answer her. I was still hungry, and it was burning the back of my throat now that I was so close to her and not under threat from another vampire. Her appealing smell only reminded me of why I was in Dysart in the first place. Something in my eyes must have given me away, for she shied back a little and shivered violently.

"What are you going to do with me?"

That, I did answer in a non-verbal manner. Before she knew what was happening, I had her back pressed up against me as I tore through the flesh of her neck to get to the artery beneath. Hot, red blood splashed against the back of my throat, increasing the intensity of the burn. I sucked, drawing blood faster and faster from her.

She whimpered and, despite the pain she was undoubtedly in, reached up a hand to touch my face. She applied pressure, like she was trying to push me away. Blood leaked out from around my lips.

"Please," she gasped. "Please, don't."


End file.
